GAZA CITY, 7 February 2005 — On her first visit to the Middle East as the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice yesterday urged Israel to take “hard decisions” and make peace with the Palestinians.

“We will ask of our partners and our friends in Israel that Israel continues to make the hard decisions that must be taken in order to promote peace and... the emergence of a democratic Palestinian state,” she said ahead of Tuesday’s landmark peace summit in Egypt. “This is a time of opportunity and a time we have to seize.”

Following talks with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, Rice met briefly with President Moshe Katsav before a meeting with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at his Jerusalem office.

“This is a hopeful time but it is a time also of great responsibility for all of us to make certain that we act on the words that we speak,” she said as she shook hands with Sharon.

She said that moves by new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who won elections in January, to deploy troops in the Gaza Strip and to work with Israel could herald a return to the stalled road map peace plan.

“All of these elements give us the possibility to get back on the road map and move toward President (George W.) Bush’s vision... of two democratic states living side-by-side in peace,” she said.

“There is much work to do,” she said.

She underlined her personal commitment and that of Bush to peace, while pointing out that the four powers which drafted the road map — the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union — stood “ready to help”.

Sharon hailed a moment “of great opportunity” in the region. “The new test is of moving toward peace and not just ceremonies,” the prime minister said, adding that he believed the United States had “a crucial role to play” to bring peace to the region.

Israel signaled it will consider freeing some Palestinian prisoners involved in attacks on Israelis, defusing a crisis with the Palestinian Authority ahead of a historic summit.

Last week, Israel’s Cabinet approved the release of 900 prisoners, none involved in violence. Palestinian officials complained that the planned gesture, ahead of the summit in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, did not go far enough, and the dispute overshadowed summit preparations.

Late Saturday, top aides of Sharon and Abbas agreed to form a committee to study additional releases, including of prisoners involved in attacks. Negotiators also finalized an arrangement of conditional amnesty for Palestinian fugitives, they said.

In the Gaza Strip, an Egyptian delegation led by the deputy of intelligence chief Omar Suleiman was to meet with Abbas, leaders of hard-line groups and security commanders to shore up an emerging cease-fire deal and review the deployment of Palestinian police in the volatile territory.

The prisoner issue is one of the most emotionally charged on the Israeli-Palestinian agenda, and a large-scale release would boost Abbas who is trying to negotiate an end to the armed Palestinian uprising.

Israel holds more than 7,000 Palestinians prisoners, many of them arrested in the current round of fighting. In decades of conflict, many thousands of Palestinians have spent time in Israeli custody.

US Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs William Burns arrived in Cairo on an unannounced visit. Burns was to hold talks with intelligence chief Suleiman. A meeting was also possible with Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit.

It was unclear whether he would also meet Sharon’s adviser Dov Weisglass or Jordanian Foreign Minister Hani Mulki who were both in Cairo for pre-summit talks.

Jordan’s King Abdallah yesterday pinned high hopes on the summit for a breakthrough in peace talks. Speaking separately to guests including Canadian Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew and Yemeni Prime Minister Abdel Kader Bajammal, the monarch described the summit as an important step on the road to peace.

“The summit is a real opportunity to encourage the Palestinians and the Israelis to resume the dialogue and the negotiations in order to reach a final solution to the struggle between them and to set up an independent Palestinian state,” he was quoted as saying by the official Petra news agency.

— With input from agencies